Field Notes from Standing Rock: Non‐Extraction as Spiritual Practice

Abstract

Field Notes from Standing Rock: Non‐Extraction as Spiritual Practice Lily Oster As more and more non‐native visitors joined the Standing Rock Sioux and allies at the Dakota Access Pipeline resistance camps in 2016, spiritual practice proved a particularly fraught area of decolonial negotiation. The camp guidelines published by the main camp, Oceti Sakowin, began by stating, “This is a ceremonial camp. Act accordingly,” and closed with “We are in a constant state of prayer and ceremony.” Non‐native visitors were asked to uphold the spirit of prayerful resistance and to abide by protocols of Lakota spiritual practice, but also—especially if we were white, as made explicit by the camp orientation staff—to refrain from taking charge, taking up too much space, taking native language or ritual objects, and taking photographs, recordings, or other souvenirs. In short, the camp guidelines read, “we ask that you give more than you take.” Certainly, some non‐native visitors were attuned to the camps’ core decolonizing effort and attempted to give more than they took. As numbers of non‐native arrivals swelled in fall 2016, however, native campers tempered earlier invitations for in‐person support with condemnations via social media and word‐of‐mouth of, as one woman put it, “the spiritual journey white folks who have been showing up to camp.” In a mid‐November 2016 Facebook post, a native long‐term camper named Alicia Smith wrote: White people are colonizing the camps. I mean that seriously. Plymouth Rock seriously. They are coming in, taking food, clothing, etc and occupying space without any desire to participate in camp maintenance and without respect of tribal protocols. These people are treating it like it is Burning Man or The Rainbow Gathering… I listened to a man on the phone with his friends telling them to all come because he thinks it's such a great ‘cultural experience.’ Smith here describes dynamics that I observed during my time at Standing Rock: white people disrespecting ceremony spaces with unconscious behavior; white people taking over ceremony spaces with their own leadership or by making demands on or complaints to native elders; and, indeed, some “spiritual journey white folks” using the camps as temporary residences, taking advantage of food, shelter, and community without attending the mandatory orientation sessions, volunteering to help keep the camps running, or participating in resistance actions. In the midst of resisting the pipeline project's extractive bid on their lands and sacred sites, native leaders at Standing Rock had to ask white supporters to counter the urge to appropriate—meaning, at root, to make one's own, to take possession of—sacred lifeways that were not theirs for the taking. To be sure, the spiritual frameworks embodied and articulated by Lakota and other native peoples at the camps are compelling at a time when many cultures live out of connection with wider earth life. Lakota spiritual leaders at Standing Rock expressed a sense of kinship between life‐kinds, prayer as resistance to corrupt and desecrating forces, and active relationships with guiding ancestors and with an inspirited world—including the Missouri River, endangered by the pipeline route, spoken of as a relative. However, indigenous thinkers have been stating for decades that it is a problem for white settlers to make claim to native spiritual teachings, having already made claim to everything else. This refusal of appropriative spirituality is about much more than correctness: this country's and this planet's past, present, and immediate future are full of calamities created by a colonial orientation to life and land as minable, possessable, exploitable, and expendable. Moreover, the taking of Lakota spiritual resources does not make one an ally of the Lakota; as indigenous scholars have long observed, white settler harvesting of the wisdom of native traditions for personal self‐actualization only undermines native communities. In a 2015 joint statement on what they term “cultural exploitation,” Nick Estes and a group of other indigenous scholars write: “The appropriation of our sacred spaces, practices, and our very identities violates us as a people, a nation, and it violates our sovereign right to determine for ourselves who we are in this world and this universe… Appropriating our practices...